It’s also important to drink plenty of clean water, at least 2 or 3 quarts daily.

You may think that the best fat loss workouts are mild cardio workouts such as brisk walking, but that’s not true.

Some intense cardio workouts, however, are excellent fat loss workouts.

If you do not now do any cardio and are ready to begin, we recommend starting with GXP. (You'll find the link awaiting you at the bottom of this page.) That already may seem frightening, but it’s not.

How does 9 minutes per week sound?

It actually only involves 9 minutes of exercise weekly!

(If you want an even higher degree of fitness, just increase your three GXP work times up to 10 minutes each.

If you then want even more fitness, we recommend switching to H.I.I.T. [high-intensity interval training] or P.A.C.E. [progressively accelerating cardiopulmonary exertion] for your 2 or 3 brief weekly cardio sessions.)

Let’s assume, though, that you are not doing any cardio workouts. Should you begin doing them? Although it’s important to obtain your physician’s blessing in advance before starting any exercise program, it might be best for you to start with strength training rather than with any kind of cardio (including mild cardio like brisk walking). There are two reasons for this.

Will it be strength training or cardio?

First, you may be too heavy to do even mild cardio. It may cause more problems than it may cure.

Second, mild cardio workouts are not as effective as strength training. (Some bodybuilders never do cardio.)

Surprised? The critical fact is that, the greater your quantity of lean muscle, the more calories you will burn 24 hours a day. Even doing a lot of mild cardio won’t help you increase your quantity of lean muscle. Why?

Since mild cardio begins to burn a lot of fat during exercising (after about 20 minutes or so of exercising), doing it several times weekly will train your body to store fat for your next exercise session!
Since muscle is metabolically active and your amount of muscle correlates to your strength, by using effective strength training as fat loss workouts you’ll automatically increase your metabolic rate for many hours after exercising. Similarly, intense cardio will also increase your metabolic rate for many hours after exercising.

Since we spend a lot more time not exercising than exercising, both strength training and intense cardio burn a lot more fat than mild cardio.

There are several wholly different kinds of weight lifting or resistance training. Here we provide you with a sample of the best kind for increasing strength, which is the best kind for increasing muscle.

Incidentally, it is not easy to increase your quantity of muscle significantly. You are not going to start any kind of weight lifting program and look like an advanced bodybuilder in a few months!

If you are female, unless you take anabolic steroids, you are never going to develop large muscles. All that will happen is that you’ll become more shapely as you lose body fat and slightly increase your amount of lean muscle.

It’s important to warm-up properly.

We cover this elsewhere on our website. We also cover all the relevant terminology as well as safety.

What are the best fat loss workouts?

The best fat loss workouts are strength training workouts that use the basic compound exercises, namely, squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, dips, and chins.

There is no one best workout. Here, though, is a pattern of workouts that are very effective.

Do just two training sessions each week. At each training session for a while, you’ll focus on getting stronger on just one exercise. After warming up, you’ll do 3 sets of 5 reps on that one exercise. [See below.] In addition, you’ll do some auxiliary exercises for that exercise. That’s it!

You’ll do a two week cycle. Select two primarily lower body exercises and two primarily upper body exercises. Let’s suppose you select squats, bench presses, deadlifts, and seated military presses.

The first workout of the first week will focus on squats. The second workout of the first week will focus on bench presses. The first workout of the second week will focus on deadlifts. The second workout of the second week will focus on seated military presses.

To figure out how much weight to use, you’ll need to determine your one rep maximum in each of the four lifts. (Take one or two workouts to determine that.) Then take 80% of that number.

Suppose, for example, the most weight you are able to do for one rep on deadlifts is 200 lbs. 80% of that is 160 pounds. So how much should you use for your 3 sets?

Use 60% for your first set, 80% for your second set, and 90% for your third set.

So, to continue with the same example, since 60% of 160 is 96 pounds, that is the weight you’d use for your first set of 5 reps. (It’s fine to round it down to 95.) Since 128 is 80% of 160, that’s what you’d use for your second set of 5 reps. (It’s fine to round it up to 130). Since 144 is 90% of 160, that’s what you’d use for your third and final set. (It’s fine to round it up to 145.)

Please don’t limit yourself to just 5 reps on your third set.

Give it everything you have and do as many reps as possible. You don’t have to fail on your last rep but go just short of failure. (For safety, on squats and deadlifts always keep one rep in you.)

Once you are able to do 10 or more reps on your third set, assume that your one rep max has gone up 5 pounds. Use that higher number (205 lbs. in the example) to recalculate your poundages for your next deadlift workout. In this way, you will progressively get stronger.

Once you have done your 3 work sets for your primary exercise, it’s a good idea to do some supplemental work. For example, you might do a couple of sets on chins, dips, back raises, core exercises such as crunches, leg presses, and lunges.

You are now not just armed with four effective fat loss workouts, you now have a pattern for twice-a-week strength training sessions that provide you with years of effective workouts.

Remember, though, that you don’t grow in the gym. What you do in the gym should stimulate growth. This is why eating well and sufficient recovery and rest are critical.

We also recommend 2 or 3 brief sessions of GXP or other intense cardio weekly. This brief amount of cardio will not interfere with your strength gains and it promotes rapid fat loss.

We suggest a fat loss goal of 1 pound weekly, which is the equivalent of 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of weight loss. If you also eat and rest well, this program will enable you to achieve that.

Enjoy your new strength and improved health!

You will find direct links to our strength/weight training pages on our site map/index.

Other pages relating to fat loss workouts

There are many pages on this website that explain how to eat well. Below you will find mention of some of our pages relating to the best dietary approach to fat loss. Use the dietary approach in conjunction with your fat loss workouts.

1 Fat Burning Diet Foods,

2. Paleo Diet,

3. Low Carbohydrate Foods.

You will find the direct links to all these pages on the menu/navigation buttons.

The pages to get you started are the GXP Intense Fitness page and the Strength Training Orientation page. See the page links below.

Alternatively, use the link at the very bottom of this page to go to FAT BURNING EXERCISES, which is the first page in this section of our website.

Highly recommended books for fat loss workouts

The books are available at some good bookstores, especially Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, usually in Kindle and paperback form, sometimes as hardbacks. If you found the fat loss workouts useful, these books are excellent further reading suggestions.

On most pages of our website, we aim to recommend the very best books available according to the topic of each page. We endeavor to make the best suggestions based on experience and our many years of work and research in the fields of health and fitness. We suggest only books that we have read and can wholly commend.

High-intensity interval training (H.I.I.T) cardio. This demonstrates interval training on three different pieces of equipment. For your fat loss workouts, twice weekly is fine; it will be intense, so it must be brief.

This completes the page about our fat loss workouts. We do hope you found the information useful and that it will help on your journey to health, strength, or weight loss!